


Lost & Found on Fire

by jrdexex



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, One kiss-that's all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 23:14:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17569766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jrdexex/pseuds/jrdexex
Summary: A spunky young human reporter does a story on the most beautiful alien woman that he's ever met.





	Lost & Found on Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BronzeAgeLove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BronzeAgeLove/gifts).



> For you! Happy New Year!

The young human college students rest his weary feet on the worn, standard blue bench of the Citadel’s Zakera Ward fast transport waiting area. He slouches and avoids eye contact with a passing turian C-Sec officer. It was the sixth hour he had been sitting there, bored of perusing Zakera Ward’s many charms. This was the third time the officer was walking by, and he was growing concerned. As he sips out of the oversized (yet half empty) tureen of coffee, his eye twitches.

“Am I insane, or are you getting closer every round…” He mutters to himself. He shakes his head and rubs under his eyes, wishing that he could remove the unsightly under eye bags. 

 

“Ellie,” He tells himself, “Get a grip. The guard man is not messing with your mind.”

“Okay. The interview’s…” He pulls his charging tablet out from under his seat, and checks. “Fifteen minutes.” 

 

“Shi—Okay.” He breathes, and clenches his hands into fists, and releases them before double checking his notes—several pictures of the same Drell woman, with a few identifying statistics such as her height (213 cm, 7 ft height), her name, her style which was typical of Drell- as few clothing items as acceptable, with reddish-purple frills which, (according to Annette) were more prominent than any male Drell’s. His notes also included a few cultural rules that he had researched himself—like all capital letters,

 

‘NO CASUAL TOUCHING. TOUCHING IS AN INTIMATE GESTURE.’

 

He repeats that last rule a few times, before standing and stowing his very large coffee container in his backpack. He puts it on and straightens his suit and hurries to Dark Star Lounge, holding his tablet in one hand. Ellie scans the moderately crowded establishment and, seeing no tall, scantily-clad Drell woman, seats himself at a table and waits for her to arrive. 

 

Ellie is somewhat startled when the next thing he sees is a blue toned Asari face up close. His face jerks as he’s jumpscared—he’s unused to seeing any aliens, let alone one two inches away from his face. 

 

“What?” He asks, assuming they had said something. His eyes still felt heavy.

 

“Your tablet is beeping at you.” The bartender, now less close, he recognizes. “Normally, I’d mind if someone was asleep in here, but today’s a quiet day.”

 

His hand latches on to his bag, trying to subtly pat it and make sure all of the contents were inside. 

 

“Don’t worry. Kept an eye on you, everything’s still there. You tip well.” She pats his shoulder. 

 

“Thanks, ma’am, thanks so much, I’m sorry, I have to go!” He turns off the alarm, grabs his bag and sprints to the fast transport stop. He arrives in time and settles his bag into the rack before sinking into his chair. With a deep frown, he checks the time and meeting place, then his transport ticket back to Earth—a small bunk on the Adrestia which had cost about a week’s pay. 

 

Ellie looks up, and through the closing rapid transport doors, he sees her. She’s more beautiful in person than the pictures could capture. Her scales gleam with a deep luminescent green in the darkened lights of the Citadel, with her frills a royal purple flirting with a black backdrop. All Ellie could do was stare at her beauty, mouth gaping a bit in shock. 

 

“Mr. Courtenay?” She asks, her voice rumbling through the translator. His toes tingle at feeling the vibrations of her speech. Drell vocal cords, he remembers suddenly, weren’t built so that humans could hear, and hearing her voice translated in his mind was unlike anything he had experienced. Space traveling Drell were known to tweak the translation’s standard speech to marvels of sound engineering, to reproduce what they should sound like, in the universal standard ear-set. “Mr. Courtenay!” She repeats, and he finds himself thin enough to squeeze through the door right before it closes, drawn to her like a moth to the light. 

 

The door keeps his jacket, but her hand pulls him through. Her touch is so unexpected and electric, Ellie struggles to find something appropriate to say, when the only thing he wants to do is kiss her, worship her beauty and ask her to never leave. Finally, he asks “Ms. Raoul?”

 

“Akela, to my friends.” She says, smiling, sliding an arm into the crook of his elbow and pulling him along, back towards the lounge. 

 

“I’m Elias, Ellie to my friends. Um, I,—I hope I can call you Akela, Ms. Raoul?” Ellie asks.

 

“Sure, Ellie.”

 

“Um,” He says, fumbling to find his notes for the first question and stalling for time, “What do your enemies call you?” 

 

“When I’m through with them…?” She says, “Probably ‘boss’.” Her shoulder rolls back into a shrug that radiated smugness.

 

“Oh no.” He mutters, glancing back at the almost completely faded rapid transport car.

 

‘What’s wrong?” She asks. 

 

_ Breathe.  _ He tells himself, and does, deeply, through his nose and out through is mouth.  _ You still have your wallet and notes.  _ “Oh, I’m just going to miss my transport out of here.”

 

“Oh.” She says. “Oh, I hadn’t thought; ah.  _ Business _ took much longer than expected.”

 

“Don’t worry about it.” He says.

 

“Drinks on me, at least,”

 

“Thanks,” Ellie slides into a seat across from Akela, whose cold hand remains on top of his. They slide into seats next to each other, Akela’s arm draped over his shoulders comfortably, and not moving. Ellie orders a cool drink, a fruit he had never tried before mixed with ice stung his throat a little and made him relax, and his mind struggled to stay on topic. 

 

“Why do you open doors for only women?” Akela asks, a long way off the beaten track of his interview questions. 

 

“Mom taught it was good manners, that ladies are...not strong. I think,” He says hesitantly. “Something like… the old chivalry, the code that was written by Eleanor of Aquitaine, not that it was actually practiced or anything, but the idea that people with power, men, should protect the weaker in power, the ladies, and opening doors was part of that idea.”

 

“Ellie, you surely realize that I’m the powerful and strong one here, so that chivalry,” She says, the word sounding unfamiliar to her voice, “Should make me the one opening doors.”

 

“It just feels wrong, letting a lady open a door for me. Sexist or not.” He mutters defensively. Her fingers tickle the back of his throat, and her next words playful rebuttal relaxes his defenses. 

 

“And Asari? They have but one gender, what about them? Do you open doors for them?”

 

“I’ve never met one,” He says, trying to play it cool. “I, um, it's my first-time off-world, and in Montreal, there aren’t many aliens. Hawaii is more metropolitan, but, um, I—I, yeah, I don’t travel a lot.”

 

“Me either.” She purrs into his ear. Her breath is cool against his ear, a step out of time with her hum of non-verbal words. 

 

The silence that follows is comfortable, and he can feel her head leaning on his shoulder, a pleasant weight. 

 

“Which brings me back to..question five..” He tries to focus on his tablet, but he didn’t want to; the look on her face makes him he realize that her annoyance that mirrors his. 

 

“How many more of these questions? Do you aim to publish my life  _ story _ or just about my current ventures?” 

 

“The more I learn, the more I want to know, Akela..” He snuggles back closer to her. Cuddling with his interviewee felt unprofessional. He reasons that she the one who initiated it, and that he didn’t mind. He liked it.  

 

“Oh?”

 

“More than professionally, although.. um..yeah, that-I mean, is that obvious—is that I mean, uh, like..um, Drell are supposed to be more touch sensitive, and this is a lot even by human standards,” 

 

She sighs, touching his chin, and making him quiet. “Yes, I did my research on humans too. Apparently, they like, kissing,” She says, leaning her face in to do exactly that. She hovers for a moment before Ellie realizes that he should close the distance. She licked his lips before aggressively pushing her tongue into his mouth. 

 

It felt distinctly un-magical. It kept pushing, down further and further, and he gagged, choking. He bit her tongue and things went downhill from there. 

 

It took a while to get a medic. 

 

That was a good distraction from the persistent beeping of Ellie’s tablet. Apparently, he had just escaped a fiery death on the rapid transport, and a search party to question him. His luggage didn’t escape the explosion.  

 


End file.
